Refuge for Outcasts
by iNoodle
Summary: The lesbians, the losers and the loathed. The mystery, jealousy, reality sweeped under the rug of the community. But when everyone's outcasted, there can't be any outcasts at all. It might be them who are the most normal after all.


**We're all outcasts sometimes. But in reality, no one's an outcast at all. **

**I hope this is real for some, because I know it's close to real for me. And that you like it - so please let me know what you think. **

**We're the monsters.**

* * *

><p>I squeezed the bonnet of the rusty, once-was red '53 Chevrolet truck tightly with affection and apology. "It'll be sad to see you go, buddy," I pat it lightly, setting off yet another flurry of flaky skin that ripped from the body of the truck that reminded me, once again, that the beautiful machine had come to its final stop.<p>

"You, ah, sure you want to do this?" The salesman pokes his head through my reverie.

"I'm sure," I said, rather unsurely, and gently placed the bung up black and silver key in the palm of his greasy, dirt-crusted hand.

"And you were after what, did you say?" The man asked gruffly, scribbling with child-like penmanship on a sales slip.

"That Volkswagen over there," I pointed, though he never raised his head to take a look.

"Hmm..." He scrawled some more, the tip of his pink tongue slipping past his lips and burrowing in the corner. "$700 should seal the deal."

I gawked. "Mr. Black, a 1953 is a classic-"

"Miss, with all due respect, this car is-"

"A piece of shit, yeah, like I haven't been told that already," I rolled my eyes sarcastically, "But it's a _good _car, Mr. Black, and you could get a lot of good parts from it."

He crossed his arms, struggling to wrap them together above his beer-popped belly. "What do you propose, young lady?"

"Not a dime of five hundred, Sir," I nod affirmatively, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin in effort to gain a few inches.

He chuckled jeeringly, "You're a funny girl. $700 is a good price, and I suggest you accept the offer."

"With all due respect_, Sir_, $500 alone is a rip off, and it's no wonder you lack customers with your _offers,_" I leered, mocking him.

"You look right he-"

"Do you want the business or not, Mr. Black?"

He narrowed his eyes exceptionally, a string of harsh, cursed words lodging itself in his throat.

I pulled away from a glum looking Mr. Black, my fleckless, tick-less, click-less orange T2 VW pickup spraying dirt over his grim figure, and indicating through the high standing arched "_Black's Pickups_" entrance and out onto the main road.

"Job well done, Swan, job well done."

Different they all were in height, weight, grade, family and hobby; yet alike they all were in social fear, awkwardness and incapability. The arts supply basement had, under growing popularity, become a refuge for outcasts, where I, Isabella Swan, was smack bang, ass first in the middle of it.

We weren't slow, disabled, or retarded like some others had labelled us. We all just chose to be far from what was considered normal, which possibly made us the most normal of them all. A small community of those shunned from '_normal_' cliques, and those who chose to embrace it.

Alice Brandon abandoned her cobbled stool from where she'd been combing hairspray through the tips of her never-changed pixie-cut hair and shuffled up to the stairs to meet me.

"Good thing you wore your skinnies today," she grinned, nodding at the stairs. Through a gap in the wood, the freckled, mousy face of a young boy stood out in the morning gleam, his eyes glistening with mischief.

"Mike, you freak," I growled, clamping my legs together consciously.

Like any _normal_ boy, he brushed against my shoulder on his way past, his voice amused and his crinkled eyes dancing, "We're all a part of the freakshow here. Lighten up, Bell, I didn't see anything."

I pulled my wool knit cap down to my brows, flushing with harassed embarrassment.

"How do you deal with that?" I growl.

"Dykes have no time for the childish behaviour of mere, mortal boys." Alice grinned again. "Plus, I have no worry that I'm attracted to him."

_Attracted, to Mike?_ I scoffed.

Alice shoved me lightly, playfully. "`_Lighten up, Bell'_, he didn't see anything."

"Lesbians are always the bitchiest," I shove Alice back, harder.

"That's because we're always neck deep _in _bitches. The equation's quite simple, actually," her grin seemed to never leave her face, from one joke to another.

I cringed, and Alice grinned further. The red bell cooped in the corner drilled quickly, incessantly. The car trade had taken longer than I'd thought. Alice frolicked up to the daylight, the over-eager, over-achiever she was. People stared; fascinated, frightened, revolted when she leaned forward and placed a chaste, friendly kiss on the corner of my mouth. I pecked her back.

"I'll see you at break. Keep your legs closed together; Mike's behind you." She waved and skipped off.

I spotted Mike over my shoulder and hurried my pace to History, smiling at Alice dancing through the distance. Alice's cruelly forced confession of sexuality had made her the avoided by girls, crude, regular joke by boys faggot of the school. She was the laughed at, heckled at homosexual who never let the smile slip from her virgin lips. And she was the best friend I never had.


End file.
